A Scoping Review: Transitions, Stress & Adaptation among Emerging Adults

The first featured article for ANS 41:3 is titled “A Scoping Review of Transitions, Stress, and Adaptation Among Emerging Adults” by Kathleen M. Hanna, PhD, RN; Katherine Laux Kaiser, PhD, RN; Sara G. Brown, EdD, RN; Christie Campbell-Grossman, PhD, RN; Alissa Fial, MA, MLIS; Amy Ford, DNP, ARPN-NP, WHNP-BCS; Diane B. Hudson, PhD, RN; Rebecca Keating-Lefler, PhD, RN; Heidi Keeler, PhD, RN; Tiffany A. Moore, PhD, RN; Audrey E. Nelson, PhD, RN; Peggy Pelish, PhD, ARNP-NP and Susan Wilhelm, PhD, RNC.  The article is available at no cost on the ANS website while it is featured!  Here is a message from Dr. Hanna about their work:

This manuscript was the result of a project conducted by the College of Nursing Parent-Child Scholarship Group at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. These practice, education and

Kathleen Hanna

research scholars chose transitions as a focus for several reasons.

As articulated by Dr. Afaf Meleis and colleagues, transitions, important to the nursing discipline, are stressful, require adaptation and have consequences for health and well-being of those experiencing them. Those in the specialty of parent-child nursing have long addressed transitions. One has only to read the pioneering works of Reva Rubin and Ramona Mercer around the transition to motherhood to see an example.

When parent-child nurses work with infants, children, adolescents, emerging adults and parents, they incorporate developmental transitions as they address health/illness transitions such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis or cerebral palsy, to name a few. The focus on transitions was also congruent with the expertise of the co-leader and myself as leader. Dr. Kaiser, the co-leader, has expertise in transitions, developed from practice in public and community health nursing and research with high risk families with young children. Her most recent research focus has been with the transition of becoming a mother and risk. I have worked with adolescents and emerging adults throughout most of my career.

Most recently, I conducted research among emerging adults with type 1 diabetes. These youth are at risk as it is a period of multiple, co-occurring transitions such as the newly named developmental period of “emerging adulthood;” the health/illness one of type 1 diabetes; and situational ones of moving out of parental homes, graduating high school and/or entering the work force.  Thus, the first project for this Parent-child Scholarship Group was a scoping review of transitions, stress, and adaptation among emerging adults who are in this newly recognized developmental period and at high risk.

The findings of this review highlight the many common transitions these youth are experiencing as well as the variety of health outcomes such as management of a health/illness condition, typical-youth-related behaviors and/or developmental achievements.  We suggest further theoretical development and research among emerging adults experiencing multiple and sometimes co-occurring transitions.